WORK AND PENSIONS

Benefit Fraud Inspection (London Borough of Hackney)

Chris Pond: On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate (BFI) follow-up inspection report on the London Borough of Hackney Council was published today and copies of the report have been placed in the Library.
	Following the housing Green Paper "Quality and Choice: A Decent Home for All", published in April 2000, the Department for Work and Pensions developed a performance framework for housing benefits. The performance standards for housing benefits allow local authorities to make a comprehensive self-assessment of whether they deliver benefit effectively and securely. They are the standards that the Department for Work and Pensions expects local authorities to aspire to and achieve in time.
	The BFI inspected the London Borough of Hackney Council against the performance standards to assess progress since the first BFI inspection report published in March 2001, and a direction update report published in March 2002.
	The report finds that the council is not at standard for any of the seven functional areas of the performance standards—strategic management, customer services, processing of claims, working with landlords, internal security, counter-fraud, and overpayments. However, the council had made real progress since the first inspection but had much work to do, particularly in the area of speed of claims processing.
	The BFI was impressed with the professionalism and enthusiasm of staff and the support members showed for the benefits service. The council had fully or partly implemented 67 per cent. of the recommendations made in the first BFI report.
	The report finds that the council's average number of days to process housing benefit claims has improved by 34 per cent. since the first inspection but it was still taking on average 136 days to process a claim. Performance for processing renewal claims without a break in payment had improved from 19 per cent. to 55 per cent. but this still falls well below the performance standards target of 83 per cent.
	Performance for customer services and working with landlords was commendable and overpayments work had improved significantly since the first inspection. In 2002–03 the council recovered £3 million through its debt recovery work. This represents a major improvement on its previously poor performance in this area.
	In 2001–02, the London Borough of Hackney Council administered some £181.4 million in housing benefits, about 21 per cent. of its total gross revenue expenditure.
	The report makes recommendations to help the council address weaknesses and further to improve the administration of housing benefit and council tax benefit, as well as counter-fraud activities.
	My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is now considering the report and will be asking the council for its proposals in response to the BFI's findings and recommendations.
	In October 2001, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State applied a direction on the benefits service of the London Borough of Hackney Council. The BFI published a direction update report in March 2002 confirming that the direction had been met.

HEALTH

Sexual Health (Select Committee Report)

Melanie Johnson: The Government's response to the Third Report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Health, on sexual health, Cm 5959, has been published today.
	Copies have been placed in the Library.

DEFENCE

Logistic support

Adam Ingram: The Ministry of Defence has recently completed a detailed review of the way in which we provide logistic support to land and air forces (including naval air and the royal marines). The End to End Review (E2E) was prompted by the recognition that today's expeditionary operations demand enhanced flexibility and responsiveness in the support of joint forces. Experience form various operations over the past decade, most recently in Iraq, has shown that there is scope to provide better logistic support to the front line.
	The E2E Review is a fundamental and wide-ranging piece of work examining the totality of logistic support from industry to the front line. The process of assessing and implementing its recommendations is now under way but it is essential that we maintain momentum to ensure that the front line is supported most effectively and efficiently within the resources available.
	As the work progresses there will be full consultation with the Trades Unions and any proposals which impact on civilian jobs or which require major investment will be subject to investment appraisal to establish costs and benefits of the options before decisions are taken. Changes to operational logistics will be tested before implementation. The ability of our forces to deliver operational capability remains paramount.
	The E2E Review proposes that our future support strategy should configure logistic support for the most likely operational scenarios, but retain the flexibility to meet other eventualities; concentrate support materiel and resources to best effect and maintain and improve the effectiveness and reliability of the supply chain, whilst streamlining processes.
	To achieve this a number of key changes are needed:
	Support infrastructure in the air environment must be concentrated in key locations and rationalised from four to two levels of Forward and Depth support.
	Support activity in the air environment should be concentrated where it can be carried out most effectively. This means some Forward support activities can be moved back into Depth support decreasing deployed infrastructure.
	Land environment logistic support must be tailored for two states; peacetime support in barracks and deployed logistics, with robust arrangements for transition between the two.
	A better focus is needed to ensure the arrival of materiel in the theatre of operations in the right order, at the right place and at the right time. A permanent, joint organisation is needed to establish and prioritise a joint supply chain that will be driven by the needs of the joint commander of operations.
	Our approach to contracting must improve to maximise the role that industry can play and realise the benefits of competition.
	The cost of logistic support must be made clearer to budget holders who should own the corresponding funding. The Chief of Defence Logistics must own the process from industry to the front line.
	A summary of the conclusions of the report has been placed in the Library of the House. This is a wide ranging set of conclusions and more work is needed in some areas to determine how best to achieve these goals. The House will be kept fully informed of progress.

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

Reducing Regional disparities in Prosperity (Select Committee Report)

Nick Raynsford: Today we are publishing the Government's response to the ODPM Select Committee report "Reducing Regional Disparities in Prosperity". Copies of the response have been deposited in the House Libraries and it is available on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's web site http://www.odpm.gov.uk/regions.
	We welcome the Select Committee's report. It makes a number of important points which we are already attempting to address and others which will need to be considered in the context of work being undertaken to deliver the regional economic performance Public Service Agreement.
	The Government's economic policies already provide a solid basis for the development of the regions. Interest and inflation rates are now lower and more stable than in any other period for a generation. There are more people in work than ever before and unemployment is at its lowest for a generation.
	But we acknowledge the persistent disparities in regional economic performance. We have a work programme in place to deliver our regional economic performance public service agreement, which will be monitored through data on gross value added (GVA) and other indicators. Progress will be reported in July 2006.
	Our strategy is not to set one region against another. It is focused on enabling every region to perform to its economic potential. That is the key to a successful British economy.